Imagine having one of those immensely high and wide green hedges, neatly clipped, that one still sees around old properties. 

So if you want a hedge is there any escape from constant clipping? Not if you want that formal, squared-off look.

Plants won’t oblige us by growing in that shape. Certainly electrically-operated shears and clipping machines make the job a lot easier these days.

Any formal hedge must be clipped so that it is wider at the base than at the top. 

This wedge shape allows the maximum amount of light to penetrate the branches. It will also prevent the hedge from becoming top heavy and likely to blow over.

Choose your hedge plants carefully. Deciduous varieties are no use if you want a thick screen throughout winter.

Popular evergreens for formal hedging, apart from privet, include English box, coprosma (looking glass plant), Irish juniper, cotoneaster conspicuus, cupressus glabra (blue Arizona cypress) and several conifers, but beware lest you get a variety that will become a 40-metre monster.

Many grevilleas can be clipped to form excellent hedges. Be sure to plant at recommended distances - and be patient.

Mexican orange blossom is a good choice for hedges. This is a beautiful, densely growing bright green shrub, which is covered in spring with white sweetly scented flowers resembling orange blossom. It is evergreen and prized for its blooms, shape and glossy foliage.

It grows to two metres in height and responds well to cutting and shaping.

Evergreen creepers such as honeysuckle, happy wanderer, sollya and jasmine can make excellent screening hedges too if trained along supports.

If you like it hot, then chillies, or peppers (also known as capsicums) are what you should be growing.

But not all are hot and spicy. There are scores of varieties and they range in taste from sweet to eye-wateringly hot.

And in some, the flavour changes as they ripen and change colour.

The common green and red capsicums, capsicum annuum, are one and the same. The red ones are ripe, and hotter.

The black and white pepper we use as a condiment doesn’t come from hot peppers.

It is the ground seed of a plant called piper nigrum.

While capsicums become hotter when their colour changes, so their vitamin C content is greatly increased - in fact, it almost doubles.

Capsicums contain more vitamin C than oranges or black currants. So there’s a lot to be said for using them in stews and casseroles.

Get busy in the garden now with a copper spray (bordeaux mixture) to guard against fungal diseases.

 Apart from killing fungal spores it is a source of copper.

Make sure the soil surface under the tree doesn’t get an overdose. Spread newspaper while you are spraying.

Spray peach and apricot trees before the buds open to combat curly leaf and black spot.

New growth on berry fruit such as gooseberries, red, black and white currants, raspberries and strawberries should be sprayed with this or lime sulphur,

In fact, all fruit trees will benefit from a spraying with bordeaux mixture while they are dormant.

If you have apple scab (black spots that disfigure the fruit), spray with bordeaux mixture at green-tip stage (early- to mid-September), and repeat in 14 days.

Then spray every fortnight with captan or mancozeb until about the end of October.